Power-Endurance

Power-Endurance workouts are mostly cardio but as the name implies the work is something between power and endurance. Another way to look at it would be repeated bursts of power for a moderate amount of time. I tend to side with Mark Twight's definition of "endurance," being greater than 90 min. So based on that, anything less than 90 min. and more than our "power" definition falls into the power-endurance category.

You will find that almost all of CrossFit falls here. Nothing wrong with that either. This is going to offer the biggest bang for your buck. For the average person this is really all they might need to do, especially if they are only working out 2-3x a week for 3 weeks a month. Most people fall into this pattern. Every month there is a reason to take a week off. Some holiday or social event lands on a Thursday - Tuesday and takes the person out of training hard for a full work week or more. So for this person, doing this mixed mode type power-endurance stuff is pure gold.

For the athlete, this period needs to be cycled just like the others. 4-6 weeks in this cycle is generally the most you'd want to spend here. This can also be used to peak the athlete depending on the intensity and load of the sessions.

These workouts can be sub-divided into a couple categories; short, long, and intermittent. I am really partial to Pat O'Shea's IWT's too. IWT looks exactly like a typical CrossFit workout, only there are prescribed rest periods to keep the intensity as high as possible. Another concept here would be cluster training, something like 2-3 reps at max intesity, 10-15 sec rest for 10 rounds or so. The idea of all of these is the same. Power. Max intensity.

If you find yourself working out 2-3x week for most of the month, like my example above, then you are going to want to really, really push hard on these workouts! A common mistake is not hitting these with the "proper" intensity.

Train hard, eat clean, and stay consistent.